Canning

I grew up in a house where the canning kettle came out every summer.  I have fond memories of Mom's canned cherries, peaches, pears and, yes, even prunes, which honestly were my favorite.  I enjoy canning myself, and have put up an assortment of jams, jellies, and fruit over the years.  Just fruits, though - I've never ventured into the wild world of pressure canning (mainly because the price of pressure canners makes me choke a little). 

My husband and I used to can apple pie filling every year, until we found out that, actually, our apple pie filling recipe wasn't safe for canning.  Oops, and thank you God for making sure we didn't get botulism!  It's been a few years since I've stood over the kettle, though, and this year I was itching to get back to it. 

Saturday my daughter and I ventured out to the farmer's market (I'm trying to go at least twice a month this season), and I picked up a half-flat of strawberries while we were there.  I got them home, and the fun began! 

Usually, jam requires a phenomenal amount of sugar.  Something like a 1:1 fruit to sugar ratio - it's truly ridiculous.  So this year I decided to try out a low-sugar recipe.  I picked up some "no sugar needed" pectin (I used the Ball brand, but I know there are others out there) and some fruit juice and decided to give it a whirl.  It calls for apple juice and up to three cups of sugar, but also provides instructions for using artificial sweeteners or honey.  I stuck with the sugar because I can't stand artificial sweeteners, and I thought our honey would have too strong a flavor and overpower the strawberries. 

I had forgotten how simple it is, really to make jam.  Wash and crush the berries, add a cup of juice (I used apple-berry blend), stir in the pectin, and boil it for a while.  Add the sugar (I used two and a half cups, about half of a normal recipe, but I could have gotten away with even less), boil some more, jar and process.  Easy as pie. 

And, from a half-flat of strawberries, we got a dozen half-pints of gorgeous (in color and flavor) jam, plus an extra pint to put in the fridge for now (because I didn't get enough jars out of the attic and didn't want to go get more, LOL!).  It's like summer in a jar.  Delicious!

Apples Apples Everywhere...

Picked all the apples off the tree this morning. I've been wanting to do apple pie filling for a while (it's been about four years since we've done any). Hubby likes to eat it on waffles. Unfortunately, my recipe uses cornstarch, and I've since found out that's a no-no in water bath canning. While it hasn't killed us yet, I figured, why take the chance?

So today I just canned apple slices in light syrup (when it comes time for waffles, I'll thicken and spice them). And I made juice out of some of the peels and cores, and made jelly from that. Took about six hours from start to finish, and I ended up with 13 quarts of apples and six half-pints of jelly. Could have had a lot more jelly, but I just flat out ran out of energy! So that'll do for now. I have just enough apples left to make a big crisp, so I'll do that tomorrow.

Now, you're probably thinking that isn't a lot for six hours worth of work. But, I figure that's close to $100 worth of canned apple pie filling and store-bought jelly, so that seems like a good trade-off to me. If the apples that grew on our tree were normal size, I could use my peeler/corer/slicer and make things go a lot faster, but we have these monstrosities that are about three or four times the size of a normal apple. So I have to cut them in wedges and peel them with a knife. So it takes a little longer. But, I watched some good movies while I worked!

All in all, it wasn't a big apple crop this year, but at least we'll be eating them for a while!